We did get aubergines...

Hmm... it appears again that, as in 2011, I managed to start the year with the greatest of intentions in 2012, blogging a few times and then life got in the way and I didn't manage to keep it up. We didn't give up on the windowsill though and did indeed get aubergines! In fact, the aubergines were our most successful windowsill crop last year - whilst we got some tomatoes and chillies, they didn't fare so well with the relentless rain that we had. Here's the 2012 highlights:

Seedlings getting bigger

Plants go out onto the windowsill

Some windmills add colour

We had a wildflower windowsill alongside our veggies

Pea flower

More wildflowers

Beans!

Aubergine flower

First bean harvest

Aubergine getting bigger

First aubergine harvested

Yellow tomatoes in the rain

Sunflowers in the rain (these self-seeded from the seeds the birds dropped out of the windowsill feeder)

Great tit in the windowsill feeder

Chilli and bean harvest

So here I am again, in 2013, starting the blog up again with the greatest of intentions. Fingers crossed I'll find the time to keep it going this year!

Daffodils dead

The torrential rain of the last couple of days has finished off the last of our windowbox daffodils. Over the past few weeks we've had some gorgeous narcissi with multiple yellow flowers coming from one stem but now their time has passed. Unfortunately it would also seem that the wildflower seeds that I planted in the pot a month or so ago have failed to germinate (I think that the seeds were just too old) so I am left with a windowbox without flowers. I have been reading about what to do with daffodils once they've died and learnt that you should leave them for 6-8 weeks after they have died to allow the nutrients to return to the bulbs and so I need to think of something to do in the meantime. I thought that given my failure at attempting to grow salad leaves in a seed tray that planting some salad leaves in and around the dead daffodils might be an idea and then once the daffodils have gone it can become a fully fledged salads windowbox.

In other flower news and in light of international sunflower guerilla gardening day on Saturday our five sunflowers are looking healthy and strong.

I think that all of our plants are starting to outgrow the small pots that they are in now and have been advised that in London the frosts pass quicker than in other parts of the country and so will be starting to think about potting them on in the not too distant.

Windowsill on the wild side

A couple of year's ago as a stocking filler at Christmas I got a matchstick garden of wildflower seeds. It's been sitting on my shelf ever since waiting until I had some soil and a watering can and at long last its day has come. I've just planted the matchsticks in amongst the daffodils in a bid to keep the flower windowbox in bloom long after the daffodils have gone. It's a lovely sunny day on the windowsill and I've given them plenty of water so they're off to the best start in amongst the daffodils. Encouraged by the success from the Wahaca chilli matchbox I'm hoping for similar success with the wildflowers. If all goes well we should be getting cornflowers, shasta daisies, corn marigold and field poppies so we'll have a rainbow of colours. I love poppies so really hoping that those seeds germinate!


You might just be able to see in the windowbox that one of our Jack Snipe narcissi looks like it's going to flower any day now too...